


Against A Common Enemy

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Series: Not Quite Fraternisation (The Longest Cold War) [2]
Category: Avengers movie- fandom, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Aliens, Angels, Coulson is a BAMF, Darcy is a bamf, Demons, Fallen Angels, Gen, Good Omens AU, Good Omens fusion, Heaven vs Hell, the Chitauri - Freeform, walking WMDs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The moment the Tesseract turned itself on, Coulson dialled the number that would make the following call untraceable, and phoned Darcy Lewis.</i>
</p><p>Against a mutual threat, sometimes even angels and demons are willing to form a temporary alliance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against A Common Enemy

**Against A Common Enemy ******

The moment the Tesseract turned itself on, Coulson dialled the number that would make the following call untraceable, and phoned Darcy Lewis.

“I’m sending Dr Foster to the scientific base in Tromso,” he said as soon as she answered the phone.

“What? Why? Tromso’s in the middle of nowhere!” Darcy exclaimed indignantly. “What’s going on that you want to keep Jane out of the way?”

“The Tesseract is awake,” Coulson responded, and waited for Darcy’s reaction.

“Aw, fuck a duck,” she groaned. There was a light _thunk_ like someone’s forehead hitting the surface of their workstation.

“I’ll pass. I’m not sure why it’s woken up now,” Coulson went on before Darcy could call him on being a smartass, “but I suspect that we’re about to get some visitors.”

“Ugh, I guess the other shoe had to drop sometime,” said Darcy. “So why are you sending me away? I mean, I assume I’m going with Jane.”

“I’ll text you if I really need you,” Coulson replied. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

“So much paperwork, am I right? Fine. Keep me posted, angel.” She hung up before he could reply.

If anyone had overheard their exchange, they most likely would have assumed that Darcy’s parting moniker was a term of endearment. In actuality, for all that Philip J. Coulson appeared to be a middle-aged SHIELD agent with a receding hairline, a set of facial expressions of varying degrees of blandness, and formidable combat skills, only one other being on Earth knew that it was all a façade. Beneath it Coulson was ancient, powerful, and blessed and bright. 

According to his birth certificate, Agent Coulson’s full name was Philip Justin ( _one who is just)_ Coulson. The only part with any truth to it was his middle name. In another tongue, it was the only name he truly answered to. 

Darcy’s name wasn’t really Darcy, either. But she’d stopped responding to her true name a long time ago.

* * *

The way it worked was something like this: there were angels, who were basically the maintenance people of the universe, and there were demons, who did their best to sabotage whatever the angels did, on general principle. Then there was Earth, the jewel of their Father’s Creation, and humanity, who the angels were supposed to protect and guide, and whom the demons tried to subvert and damage.

As members of two opposing teams, Coulson and Darcy should have been at odds. On paper, they were. In reality, as the two representatives of Heaven and Hell who had been stationed on Earth since the Heavenly Civil War, they had more in common with each other than they did their own people, to whom Earth was a distant and unfamiliar presence. Darcy had never really been one to follow orders in the first place no matter who gave them, and possessed an innate sense of personal (if idiosyncratic) integrity that Falling hadn’t touched, while Coulson was very pragmatic for an angel, willing to make concessions in the pursuit of his work.

Their relationship at this point was easy and well-worn, somewhere between friendship and competitive rivalry. The two of them bickered and frequently tried to get one up on the other, but when you came right down to it, their basic outlook on life wasn’t really dissimilar. And when it came to a potential threat to the people of Earth, their attitude was exactly the same.

* * *

When Loki Odinsson turned up and stole the Tesseract, madness glittering in his haunted eyes, Coulson knew they had a problem.

Darcy had sent him several text complaining about Tromso, and he wrote out a note in Enochian (obscure enough that even SHIELD was unlikely to be able to translate it; just in case, Coulson used the higher form, which was even more complex and difficult to decipher), took a photograph of it on his phone, and sent it to Darcy. 

Five minutes later he received a photo of a note written in badly-scrawled Enochian, accusing Loki of breeding with eldritch creatures beyond sane dimensions.

Sadly, Coulson suspected that that wasn’t so much an insult, as unfortunately close to the truth.

* * *

Meeting Steve Rogers was a little overwhelming, Coulson was willing to admit. Humans like Captain Rogers were the reason why angels looked after Earth with such dedication: kind and selfless and brave and honest and more, representing the pinnacle of human nature and setting the bar for what humanity might, someday, achieve as a whole.

Al the same, Coulson hoped Darcy never heard about his _‘I watched you while you were sleeping’_ speech. She’d never let him live it down.

Forever was a long time, and angels and demons had long memories. He didn’t want this being remembered another few million years from now. That would just be embarrassing.

* * *

As Loki’s brainwashed soldiers attacked the helicarrier, Coulson texted Darcy, calmly collected one of the Phase Two weapons designed for this sort of contingency, and went to check on what Loki was doing among all the chaos while everyone else was distracted.

As he expected, the Norse god was free from his containment. Unfortunately, a confused-looking Thor had taken his place, and Loki was hovering over the containment unit controls looking ready to eject him.

“Move away, please,” Coulson said politely, holding the Phase Two weapon threateningly. Loki slowly removed away from the containment unit’s controls, watching Coulson closely.

“You like this?” Coulson indicated the Phase Two weapon. “We started working on the prototype after you sent the Destroyer. Even I don’t know what it does.” He deliberately pressed the activation button, and the weapon began to power up. “Do you want to find out?”

Coulson saw the instant that Loki replaced himself with an illusory double. He whirled just in time to catch hold of the spear as Loki tried to stab him with it.

Loki paused in startled surprise, and there was the _snap-woosh_ of wings where there hadn’t been wings before.

“Okay, ssso I am sssick of this invassion ssshit, Coulssson,” Darcy complained, her wings spread threateningly. “Oh hey, Thor.” She nodded absently at the trapped godling, and removed her sunglasses. Serpentine eyes that glowed with fury glared in Loki’s direction.

Coulson smiled, very slightly, and let his own wings unfold.

Loki looked stunned, and a little frightened, as his eyes darted between Darcy’s furious visage and Coulson’s calm one. He was, Coulson judged, perhaps beginning to realise that he was out of hi depth.

“You little ssshit,” Darcy ranted, hissing the sibilant syllables like the Serpent she was. “You think you have a right to this planet? Thiss planet is _oursss,_ godling. We’ve been here since the Beginning, and fighting over this planet almossst asss long, and no baby Jotun in Aessir sskin isss going to interfere.”

“I don’t understand,” said Thor, sounding baffled and somewhat alarmed.

“I’m an angel,” Coulson responded, never looking away from Loki. “Darcy is a demon. We are representatives of Heaven and Hell, respectively.” He smiled at Loki as the Aesir paled in recognition. “I strongly suggest that you surrender peacefully and tell us everything we want to know. Truthfully,” he added. 

Thor still didn’t seem to understand what Coulson and Darcy were.

“Such names are unfamiliar to me,” Thor admitted.

“He is what we know as a _Celestial Sentinel,_ Thor,” Loki said impatiently. “And the girl is one of their betrayers.”

“Hey, I didn’t betray anyone,” Darcy snapped. “I jussst hung around with the wrong people and wass damned by asssociation. Which iss more than can be sssaid for you, Mr ‘Burdened With Gloriousss Purpossse.’ Alssso, I’d like to point out, giving uss a name other than what we call ourselves? Really imperialissst of you.”

“Can we stay on topic, please,” Coulson requested. “Loki. Do you agree to surrender and give us the information we need?”

Loki smiled. It was a strange, strained thing.

“I do not,” he replied. Coulson nodded thoughtfully.

“I thought you might say that,” he agreed mildly, and shot Loki with the Phase Two weapon.

Loki was blasted back through the interior wall, and Darcy let out a whoop.

“Nice one, angel!” she said approvingly. “Hey, can I try that thing?”

“No,” Coulson answered, striding forward to release Thor from the Hulk containment unit as Darcy darted through the hole that Loki had left. Thor emerged from the containment unit still looking rather bewildered.

There was a blast of unholy light from the hole in the wall, and a painful scream. Darcy reappeared, holding Loki’s spear, and frowning thunderously.

“Dude, take a look at this thing,” she said, and thrust the spear at Coulson.

He instantly knew what she meant. The spear radiated with sickly, unnatural energy. It was immediately apparent that the spear had either been crafted or altered by the creatures of the Outer Reaches, that lurked between worlds and waited in hopes of finding a way inside.

There was the sound of booted feet, which stopped quite suddenly, and the sound of weapons being readied.

“What the goddamn hell?” a familiar voice demanded explosively, and Coulson looked up and smiled as he met Fury’s astonished eye.

“Hey, boss,” he said calmly.

“Hey, angel, what do you want to do with this wasste of sspace?” Darcy demanded, dragging an unconscious Loki through the hole in the wall by his cape. “And whoa, who’s the Matrix essscapee?” 

Coulson didn’t know whether to wince, or laugh. He ended up making a slight face even as his lips twitched.

“My name is Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD, and captain of this fucking helicarrier,” Fury responded, narrowing his eye at Darcy. “You’re Dr Foster’s intern.”

“Yup,” Darcy agreed cheerfully. “That’s me. You want to stash this guy someplace he can’t get out of?” She kicked Loki slightly for emphasis.

“I will guard Loki,” Thor told her.

“Right, because that worked out so well last time," she snarked. "By the way, Director, don’t worry about me. I’m working with Halo over there.” She nodded at Coulson and let go of Loki’s cape, pulling her sunglasses out of her pocket and putting them back on to conceal her eyes. “So, Coulson. What’s our next move? I mean, not that I’m actually going to do what you say, or anything, because _hello, demon,_ but I’m kinda curious what you plan to do next.”

Coulson looked at the spear in his hand.

“I think we need to find out who this belongs to,” he said thoughtfully.

* * *

The spear, when Coulson examined it more closely, was a multi-purpose tool, linked closely to the will of the Tesseract itself. If Coulson had interpreted the spellwork correctly, Loki had made preparations to open a doorway, which would allow the eldritch creatures Loki was working with – although how willing this cooperation really was, Coulson was unsure of – to break through and invade Earth.

The problem was, stopping Loki from completing the spell wouldn’t prevent the creatures coming through… the presence of the spear itself would be enough, because in time the mere existence of the spell, twisted and unnatural as it was, would weaken spacetime to a sufficient degree that the invaders would be able to break through via their own efforts.

Coulson kept this last piece of information to himself. The humans would panic over it and try to avert the inevitable, which was this: the only way to truly stop Earth from being invaded by the beings Loki was working with, was to allow them to form and enter the portal, and destroy them from there.

He met Darcy’s eyes behind her sunglasses as the dabate raged around them, and she slowly smiled, and closed one eye in a sly wink. No one noticed as she slid away, heading for the room where an unsuspecting Thor was standing guard over Loki.

Coulson felt a little sorry for him. Darcy believed that a fight was something that happened when the antagonist lacked enough imagination to triumph by other means. Loki might be known as the pagan god of trickery and lies, but he didn’t have half of Darcy’s experience or wiles, and Thor was hopelessly outmatched.

Coulson knew that better than anyone. 

Darcy slipped back into the room without anyone having particularly paid attention to her absence or return.

The moment that the alert came that Loki was gone, Darcy smirked, grabbed the spear, and vanished in a flash of wings.

“ _Coulson!_ ” Fury bellowed.

Coulson shrugged apologetically.

“Well, she _is_ a demon,” was all he said, and Fury subjected him to a truly withering glare before storming off to the bridge.

His phone vibrated, and when he checked his messages, there was a new photo, of another message in Enochian.

_ Loki’s idiocy surpasses my comprehension,  _ it said, in the formal manner of Enochian, _for he did take me at my word when I did swear that I would aid him in opening the portal for his allies, so that I might sow chaos, and prove to you anew my devious nature and lack of fidelity._ (The word ‘dumbass’ was clearly implied.) _Can you believe it is so?_

Coulson pocketed his phone again, and hope that the Avengers were ready to unite to fight the coming threat.

* * *

As the first of the Chitauri began pouring through the portal above Stark Tower, Darcy reappeared on the Helicarrier and instantly had multiple guns trained on her.

“Oh, come on!” she protest, fighting a grin, and failing. “I’m a demon, back-stabbing is what I _do._ But look, now we have an actual target!” She grinned at Coulson. “Ready to pull a Sodom and Gomorrah, Coulson?”

Coulson nodded, and Darcy disappeared again.

“Director.” He glanced at Fury. “Keep our people out of the sky.”

Before the man could answer, Coulson was somewhere else.

The thing that about being Heaven’s representative on Earth that other angels sometimes forgot, or else never grasped in the first place, was that if something went wrong, the man on the ground had to be powerful enough to deal with it. Coulson might be stuck on Earth instead of performing more glamorous duties, but that didn’t mean he should be underestimated.

The moment he appeared aboard one of the Chitauri ships, he was already beginning to glow. Startled drones attempted to shoot him, but with a wave of Coulson’s hand they and their weaponry went flying. The glow beneath his skin, built up until it wa blinding, and then…

…Coulson let go.

In some ways, the effect of a large-scale angelic smiting was remarkable similar to the detonation of an atomic weapon. Everything caught in the wave of holy energy was vaporised instantly. The entire Chitauri fleet was less than dust within seconds.

As Coulson waited for the lingering luminescence to his skin to die down, keeping an eye out for any surviving Chitauri ships in the space around him, the portal below suddenly closed and Coulson knew that Darcy must have deactivated it.

His suit had been vaporised along with everything else in the vicinity, so Coulson restored it before returning to Earth.

The Chitauri all seemed to have collapsed where they stood, their hovercraft crashing wherever they happened to be when Coulson had destroyed the fleet.

Coulson found Darcy on the roof of Stark Tower, carefully dismantling the spear. She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses.

“Loki?” Coulson asked.

“Thor has him,” Darcy responded, her attention mostly on the spear. “The aliens?”

“Smote.”

Darcy did look up then, smiling viciously, her pupils thin slits in the daylight.

“So, we saved the world, again. Go us.”

Coulson surveyed the mess that the city had turned into. There were dead Chitauri everywhere, and a couple of monstrous turtle-like ships that had crashed just like the hovercraft had.

“I’d say that Fury’s going to keelhaul me for this, except for the obvious,” he noted.

Darcy smirked.

“Neuralizing time, right?” She mimed pressing the button on an imaginary memory-wiping device.

“Exactly.”

* * *

Several hours later, Coulson was enjoying a scotch when his introspective drinking was interrupted.

“So, are you two fraternising?” Stark asked, bursting into the bar with his usual air of flamboyance. The rest of the Avengers followed behind him.

“This isn’t fraternising,” Coulson replied coolly. “We just happened to choose the same bar.”

“Fraternising is when we go swing dancing on weekends,” Darcy put in, and started humming _American Patrol_ under her breath.

Coulson glared at her.

“We haven’t gone dancing since 1948.”

“It still counts!”

“Why doesn’t anyone else remember what you are?” Captain Rogers asked, looking earnest and concerned.

Coulson felt his face soften. Darcy jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, and he schooled his expression.

“Humans aren’t supposed to know for sure we’re here,” Darcy answered for him. “But we let you guys remember, in case you need our help again sometime. Everyone else has to take it on faith, which I think is a stupid policy, but hey, it makes my job easier if no one believes people like me are going around leading them unto temptation.”

“You’re seriously a demon?” Natasha asked Darcy skeptically. Clint was staring at Coulson like he didn’t know whether to feel betrayed, or awed.

“She is,” Coulson responded. “And I’m an angel. Whether you believe us or not doesn’t change our natures.”

“He means he doesn’t care if you believe or not, as long as you aren’t annoying about it,” Darcy translated.

“Isn’t erasing everyone’s memories unethical?” Dr Banner asked, frowning.

Coulson shrugged.

“Orders from Above,” he said, and Darcy snorted at the pun.

“And Below,” she agreed, snickering. “I mean, if you like, we can get into a debate about the ethics of it all and on what grounds the Heavenly Host claim moral authority and how they appear through a non-Western lens of interpretation, etcetera, but it’s not actually going not change anything.”

“Sometimes I really regret that you studied Milton during college,” Coulson informed her.

“I rocked that elective so hard,” Darcy said happily. “And it gave me so much extra material for these discussions, seriously. Humans are the _best_ when it comes to articulate argument.”

“I did not know before today that Celestial Sentinels still watched over Midgard,” said Thor.

“The word is _angels_ , Thor,” Darcy complained. “What is it with you people refusing to use people’s actual names. Jessusss.” Her sunglasses slid down slightly and she glared at Thor over the top of them, her eyes golden and snakelike. The Avengers who hadn’t gotten a glimpse of her eyes earlier all flinched or recoiled, although in Natasha’s case it was almost unnoticeable.

Darcy only smirked a little, and pushed her sunglasses back up until they hid her eyes again.

“Uh, that was freaky,” Stark commented. Darcy hissed at him, and he jumped, visibly unnerved. Coulson rolled his eyes at her antics. Darcy just snickered, unaffected by his disapproval.

“Wait,” said Clint suddenly, “so when people say ‘ _go to hell_ ,’ that’s an actual thing that can happen?” He looked worried.

“Well yeah, but you’re doing fine,” said Darcy. “I guess the angel steered you onto the path of righteousness, or something.”

Clint gave Coulson a wondering stare, and Coulson knew without needing to be told that he was recalling how Coulson had recruited him to SHIELD years ago.

“Much as I hate to interrupt anything involving the spirit of scientific inquiry, I’m getting a drink,” said Stark. “Bruce?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Dr Banner.

“Angry drunk, huh?” Stark said in understanding. “Right, a Shirley Temple for you.” 

“I don’t–” Dr Banner began, but Stark was already calling the bartender over.

“You seem strangely unfazed by this,” Captain Rogers said to him, when Stark finished ordering drinks for everyone.

“Hey, if Norse gods can show up, why not angels and demons?” Stark shrugged. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was surprised as everyone else when I saw the wings, but yeah. It’s a thing, I can deal.”

“I like you,” Darcy told him, grinning.

“Everyone either be quiet or go away,” said Coulson tiredly. “I vaporised an entire alien fleet. I’m feeling exhausted, and a little testy.”

There was silence as everyone absorbed the implications of that.

“Gotcha, sir,” Clint said after a long moment. “We’ll leave you alone.”

Stark looked like he wanted to argue with that, and Dr Banner seemed uneasy, but Natasha and Clint and Captain Rogers managed to shepherd them away. Thor left with the others, but sent thoughtful glances at Coulson and Darcy as he went.

“To some peace and quiet,” Coulson said wearily, and threw back his scotch.

“In your dreams,” Darcy said cheerfully, and followed suit.


End file.
